August dragged along its procession of heat-smitten ’teens and twenties.
Billy Cobb grew thinner and more miserable. A ray of hope appeared to
him, however. There was the “609.”
The 609, in the parlance of the air service, is the rigid physical test
that every army flyer must survive twice yearly. A man who can triumph
over the 609 is verging on bodily perfection. There is no other
examination so searching.
And Billy judged that he was a long way from physical impeccability. He
prayed that he might not pass the test. It was the only honorable avenue
of escape from the incubus of fear that was slowly breaking Jennie and,
through Jennie, breaking him, too.
Of course he could have failed to qualify by deliberate deceit. It would
be the easiest matter in the world to claim that his eyes were weakening
and to prove his claim by false readings of the testing charts. And
there were other possibilities. But deceit was a world away from Billy’s
code. He had to keep faith and a clean conscience for Jennie. He would
do his honest best to qualify--and hope to fail honestly.
Late in the month he reported to the flight surgeon. He was feeling
particularly rocky that morning. Which--paradoxically--made him almost
cheerful.
“I’ll flunk it sure,” he told himself.
He watched the face of the orderly who took his pulse, blood pressure
and temperature anxiously. But the man was an automaton. He was not
interested in anything he might discover about Billy’s condition. His
face betrayed nothing but boredom.
The junior surgeon who put Billy through the nauseating gates of the
revolving chair was professionally discreet.
On the eye charts Billy read a perfect “twenty-twenty” with either eye
and then essayed a discouragingly successful “twenty-fifteen.” But he
had expected this.
“Not so bad--not so bad,” commented the junior surgeon. “I’ll hand you
over to Captain Weyman. He wants to look at you before we turn you
loose.”
Billy undressed in the examining room. The dismal conviction was growing
on him that he would qualify after all. Nobody had batted an eye or
shaken a head. Still, hope was not entirely dead. Weyman might find
something. Weyman was thorough.
The surgeon came in and set to work. He waived the minor preliminaries.
“You’re thin,” he said, “but that’s nothing this kind of weather. I hear
you’ve been overdoing the flying a bit. I’ll look into that.”
He went over Billy with a stethoscope. Billy could not believe that the
excited pounding of his heart would escape comment. Finally Weyman put
the stethoscope away. He misread the anxious light in Billy’s eyes.
“Oh,” he said, “you needn’t worry this time. You’ll do. But you’ve got
to ease up. I’ve been looking over the reports on the other tests. Blood
pressure pretty high. And your heart doesn’t sound as good as the last
time. But you’ll do. Get more sleep. Cut down the flying by half. A rest
will fix you up like new. You’re taking a spell off in October. You’ll
be a new man after that. Well, come back here in February. See you at
the club tonight.”
He clattered out and Billy sat down suddenly. He felt very faint.
Then he remembered that he was to lunch with Jennie. He struggled into
his clothes. He had been picturing to himself how he would break the
good news of his disqualification. He had visioned the little play of
dismay she would make when he told her. He had painted on his mind’s eye
the flush of happiness that would relieve the pallor of her cheeks,
betraying her gladness in spite of pretended concern.
Now it would not happen. There would be the same mummery of pretense
that had been going on for the past month between them, the same
transparent mask of unconcern that covered up but did not hide. By tacit
consent they would talk of casual things casually. They would smile
brightly for each other’s benefit. They would discuss some new phase of
the plans for October with the colonel. But neither would be deceived.
In the depths of Jennie’s wistful eyes Billy would see the lurking
specter of fear. In the deepening lines of Billy’s haggard face Jennie
would read the story of his yearning to ease her trouble. And in the
back of their minds, while they mouthed inconsequentialities, would be
the relentless query of their common obsession: “The last crash--when?”
Billy decided that he couldn’t face Jennie now. It would be turning the
knife. He would beg off, have a bite at the club, and bury himself in
work. In the evening he would call. By then the edge of his
disappointment would have worn off. He could dissemble better then. In
the evening----
But would there be any evening?
There it was again! The obsession! He hurled the thought from him. But
it would come back! In a moment it would be there dogging him again!
He thought bleakly of the years ahead that he must live with that
leering, tantalizing demon mocking him from the back of his brain.
And then it was back, confronting him again! Years ahead? Perhaps only
hours! He was scheduled to fly at five o’clock! He decided he would
lunch with Jennie after all. It might be the last----
“God!” he choked, tugging at a boot.
She was waiting for him behind the screens on the veranda. She sat
listlessly, staring off at distant things. She wondered if Billy
suspected a tithe of the whole truth--that she had not slept seven hours
in the past week; that she could no longer eat excepting under the
compulsion of her father’s watchful eye, or Billy’s; that it was
increasingly difficult for her to muster the strength to rise from a
chair; that the sound of an engine made her faint and giddy.
She wondered how long it would be before she must give up, must go to
bed, must stay there. It wouldn’t be until the sheer impossibility of
physical resistance forced it--but that might be any day. She dreaded
the revelation the day would bring. She was afraid of its effect on
Billy. But she held to her resolution. It was the air or nothing for
them.
The crunching of Billy’s boots on the path roused her.
She was standing at the door, holding it ajar, as he came up the two
short steps. She was smiling--a pathetic, lying smile.
He led her back to her chair. It occurred to her that if he hadn’t done
that she must have sunk to the floor and been carried. She thought she
would have liked that. Yet she had the courage to sit erect and smile at
him.
“Did you pass all right, dear?” she questioned.
“Yes,” he said dully; “I passed.”
“Oh, Billy, that’s good. I was afraid you might have been overdoing. I
wondered. I’m awfully glad, dear.” It was a supreme show of pathetic
courage.
He revolted.
“Jennie,” he exclaimed, “I wish to Heaven I’d failed! You’re going out
on your feet. I can see it. I confess, I never in my life hoped for
anything as I hoped today that Weyman would turn me down! I’ve told
Norris about this--he’s the only one that knows. And he said one night
that something always turned up. I thought it might be true. I thought
the 609 would be the thing. It only proves that Norris----”
“No, Billy dear. It only proves what I have told you--the air needs you,
even more than I.”
“It isn’t so Jennie! I know it isn’t so. I’m going to quit. You come
first!”
“You are not, Billy Cobb!! That was settled a month ago. You know you’re
not. I understand, dear--how you feel. But it can’t be. I won’t permit
it. Now come in to lunch and don’t let’s discuss anything gloomier than
October. You promise?”
There was nothing else he could do. They went in silently. The colonel
was already at table.
* * * * *
The red rim of the sun was just dipping out of sight behind the western
hills that evening when Jennie, dressed in white of a crispness that
belied the drooping state of her spirits, slipped away from the screened
veranda and made painfully off toward the hangars. All afternoon the
sultry air had screamed and reverberated with the voices of engines. But
now only one ship remained aloft, doggedly circling the field in the
falling twilight with throttled motor droning sullenly. The ship was
Billy’s. Soon he would make the field and taxi in to the hangar. Jennie
meant to be there to meet him. She wanted to let him know in this
fashion that she approved and that her strength was equal to the ordeal
even of watching him fly.
It was hard going. She stumbled innumerable times. Once she all but
fell. But she reached the hangar at length and pulled herself together
for the benefit of Hansen, who was waiting with his crew.
Billy’s ship was still circling. Hansen brought Jennie a folding camp
stool to sit on while she watched. He never suspected how grateful she
was for that small piece of hesitant courtesy.
The mechanic dug a heavy watch from the breast pocket of his oil-stained
coveralls and consulted it.
“Been up twenty-five minutes on this hop, Miss Brent,” he said. “He’ll
be coming in any minute now.”
As he spoke Billy commenced a sedate spiral at the northern extremity of
the field. He was coming in. Not a breath of air stirred. He might have
landed equally well from the east, the west, or the south. But the “T”
in the white circle clearly pointed the only right way. Billy never
disregarded flying regulations. He would have landed the way the T
pointed if there hadn’t been another plane to cut his right of way
within a million miles.
As a matter of fact there was another plane, but Billy didn’t know it. A
strange, battered affair it was, with patched and tattered wings, that
came coughing along, low down, out of the west; a disreputable gypsy of
the air, a mangy sky pariah, seeking lodging for the night. Just above
the treetops it scuttled, driving heedlessly for shelter, its pilot
intent only on reaching a safe field before his gas was spent. Without a
thought for other traffic or regulations it cleared the last obstacle by
a scant yard and shot for the landing dead across the monitory T, coming
fast from west to east.
It was then that Billy first saw it. And he saw it as soon as anybody
else, for it had slunk into port wholly unobserved under cover of the
landscape, the sound of its puny engine muffled in the full-voiced note
of Billy’s Liberty.
“Hell and all!”
Hansen’s fervid exclamation drew Jennie’s eyes from their anxious vigil
over Billy’s landing. She saw the furtive gypsy shooting in at dead
right angles to the course of the oncoming DH. And a rapid glance from
ship to ship told her that the thing she had spent the last month
dreading was at hand. There was going to be a crash. The gypsy and the
DH had leveled off together. Both were losing flying speed. Neither
could open out and pick up fast enough to gain the air and clear the
other. They were going to meet--going to meet hard! And Billy was in the
DH!
What Jennie saw, Billy saw in the same instant. And the next instant he
acted. He could not possibly get over or around the stranger. He must
stop or collide. And he stopped. The maneuver was simple and instantly
effective. Billy did nothing more than snap the stick back and to the
left the full length of its course.
Have you ever seen a curveting stallion rear wildly, slip, and fall
heavily on his side? The DH did just that. Its nose lifted ponderously,
its wheels pawed the air, its left wing dropped sharply, it faltered and
hung, and just as it swayed and slipped groundward Billy cut the switch.
It struck with an indescribably sickening sound, a combination of thud,
crackle and crash all rolled together in a terrifying, explosive snarl.
But there was no danger to speak of. Billy’s cunning had provided
against that. All the speed had been absorbed by the lift as the ship
reared. She had stopped before she struck the ground. And Billy and his
passenger were scrambling out when the gypsy slipped with a guilty swish
across the shattered bow of the quivering wreck and ran out its
momentum--safe with twenty feet to spare.
Jennie stood in frozen anguish until it was over. She saw the rearing
ship. She heard the hideous outburst as it crashed. But she did not see
Billy emerge from the heap of rumpled fabric, kindling wood, and junk.
For by the time that happened she lay a pathetic heap of white on the
oil-soaked ground beside the camp stool.
Billy made straight for the gypsy ship with murder in each knotted fist.
But he never reached it. He was intercepted by a breathless crew man.
“Sir,” panted the mechanic, “Miss Brent--is at--the hangar. She
fainted!”